Donald Trump with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, White House, June 12, 2019

Donald Trump says that he will take “information” on an election opponent from Russia or another foreign government, and that he would see no reason to call the FBI.

“It’s not an interference,” Trump said in an interview with ABC News on Wednesday. “They have information — I think I’d take it.”

He said the material would be “opposition research” and that he would contact the FBI only “if I thought there was something wrong”.

In the wake of Russia’s election intervention in 2016, which supported Trump against Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, FBI Director Christopher Wray has said politicians should contact the agency in similar circumstances in the 2020 campaign.

But Trump was dismissive yesterday:

I don’t think in my whole life I’ve ever called the FBI. In my whole life.

You don’t call the FBI. You throw somebody out of your office, you do whatever you do. Give me a break — life doesn’t work that way.

Reminded of Wray’s position, Trump snapped, “The FBI director is wrong, because frankly it doesn’t happen like that in life.”

Russian officials had “numerous contacts” with the Trump campaign in 2016, according to the Mueller Report released in April. They included Moscow’s offers of materials damaging to Hillary Clinton and dissemination of e-mails, stolen by Russian military intelligence, through WikiLeaks.

The report also says there is evidence in eight cases of Trump obstructing or attempting to obstruct justice over the investigation, although the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel advised Special Counsel Robert Mueller that a sitting President could not be indicted.

See Mueller Report Analysis: Yes, There Was Collusion and Obstruction of Justice
Mueller Report Analysis: Yes, There Was Collusion and Obstruction of Justice

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Trump again misrepresented the Mueller Report, falsely saying that document showed “we rebuffed them” when the Russians offered assistance.

Trump’s comments came as his son Donald Jr. testified in closed-door session to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

In June 2016, when a broker communicated Russia’s offer of anti-Clinton material, Donald Jr. replied, “If it’s what you say, I love it.”

Trump Jr., Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner met Kremlin-linked envoys on June 9, 2016 in Trump Tower. The Trump camp claims the meeting was soon ended with no discussion of the anti-Clinton offer, but WikiLeaks soon disseminated the stolen e-mails — and Donald Trump Sr. openly called on Moscow to hack Clinton’s private server.

In a recent interview with Axios, Kushner also refused to rule out taking information from a foreign government:

I don’t know. It’s hard to do hypotheticals, but the reality is is that we were not given anything that was salacious.